


On the First Day of Christmas

by hgdoghouse



Category: The Professionals
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-24
Updated: 2011-11-24
Packaged: 2017-10-26 12:11:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/282944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hgdoghouse/pseuds/hgdoghouse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Presents, Bodie and Doyle style</p>
            </blockquote>





	On the First Day of Christmas

As the last sweet melancholy chord faded, Doyle's bare toes gave a responsive flex of sheer pleasure.

"Oh yeah, I like that," he breathed blissfully. His eyes still closed, his expression was rapt.

Bodie spared the relaxed, close-lidded face a look in which irritation and indulgence were mixed in equal proportion. "I think I guessed that the sixth time it came on," he said with a trace of acidity. He was not smitten with Purcell's 'Chacony', not least because he had no idea how to pronounce it - placing no faith in his partner's linguistic abilities.

Doyle's nose wrinkled. "It's too short."

"You saying Persil didn't know what he was doing?"

"Nah, just that I like to hear it more than once. And if you're trying to indicate you've got a load of washing to be done, forget it. You had plenty of time to get on with that this morning."

"I must be losing my subtle touch," mused Bodie.

Doyle gave a derisive snort.

"It's all right for you," Bodie added. "Rita's blue-eyed boy you are. She never did take to me. She still gives me the odd accusing look even after all this time." They had moved flats twice since Doyle's return to duty but still patronised the launderette that had some fond memories for them both.

"Just goes to show she's a woman with impeccable instincts. If she frightens you that much you could always use the place round the corner."

"No. That laundrette of hers has some fond memories. Shit," groaned Bodie, when Doyle crowed his delight.

"OK, you've got me," Bodie sighed.

"I know." Oozing satisfaction and a proprietorial pride which still disconcerted Bodie at times, Doyle gave a lengthy stretch. "Never thought I'd see the day when either of us would get sentimental over a laundrette, though. Well, that _I_ would." He caught the cushion thrown in his direction.

"Is that tape off or rewinding?" Bodie demanded with suspicion, cocking his head as he tried to distinguish the quality of the whirring noise coming from the deck.

"Rewinding. Maybe six times on the trot is a bit much," Doyle conceded. Arching upwards his hand reached back, unerringly depressing the right button on the deck and silencing the soft hum of a cassette on automatic rewind. Subsiding in a boneless huddle once more, sprawled along the sofa, he looked warm, rumpled and infinitely desirable.

"Once would have done me," Bodie conceded placidly. Setting down his newspaper, he abandoned any illusion of interest in world affairs in favour of an unabashed appreciation of his companion, who was happily engrossed in humming a twiddily section to himself while conducting his toes.

Ray still took the same section too fast even now, Bodie noted, tempted to correct him. Prudence prevailed over the impulse for one-up-manship.

Having begun his recital in too high a key Doyle was forced to break off his musical endeavour. He took a reviving sip from the glass of brandy balanced on his groin.

"How you suffer," he belatedly sympathised, taking in Bodie's contented posture.

"Could be worse I suppose," Bodie admitted philosophically. "At least this one bops along better than some of the others."

In the year and a half they had been - what was that phrase, yeah, co-habiting, that was it - co-habiting, he had resigned himself to Doyle's love of music around whichever flat they happened to be living in. But it was slightly worrying that despite their - relative - domestic harmony Ray still had a decidedly mournful sounding list of favourites.

Doyle's chin tilted. "Don't give me that. Or are you going to try and pretend that I didn't come in early the other evening to catch you with it going at full blast? You're a lying sod."

"True," acknowledged Bodie, taking a lazy satisfaction in the fact.

Slumped in his chair, he sat appreciating the view while Doyle uncurled himself from supine bliss to stretch with a lazy thoroughness, his shirt already more than halfway out of his waistband before he started. Bodie was busy trying to decide whether it was the arch of the small buttocks or the thrust of the softly defined genitals that gave the most pleasure when he refocused to find Doyle staring at him.

Recognising the expression of limpid innocence, a resigned grin twitched the corners of Bodie's mouth. "All right, though I know I'm going to regret asking this. What great thought is struggling to free itself?"

"Ear plugs," said Doyle profoundly. He waited expectantly.

"And to you. You turning kinky on me?"

"I wish you didn't sound so hopeful," complained Doyle, his fingers ruffling flattened curls. "Anyway, it wouldn't be for want of you trying," he added darkly, his hand sliding between the edges of his shirt to rub a minor irritation.

Heavy-lidded eyes tracing the slowing progress of Doyle's hand, Bodie missed the next sentence, failing miserably to disguise the fact.

"Oy, are you listening to me?"

"All the time," he lied glibly, watching with sorrow as two buttons were refastened, Doyle meandering back across the room to find his half-finished drink.

"I'm glad to hear it," Doyle approved, his glass drained. "Think about it. Those ear plugs will be the answer to potential strife. You can wear them while I'm playing the stereo." Knowing full well that his partner hated wearing anything over his ears, even the protective cans for the range or armoury shed, his expression was one of seraphic innocence.

"Well, if you've got it all worked out you won't be interested in what I brought you today," said Bodie casually.

"Not another one," Doyle groaned.

Knowing his Doyle, Bodie sat back and waited.

"Do you have any idea how aggravating you can be? Where is it then?" demanded Doyle, caving in under twenty seconds.

"Is it my fault you're such a nosy bugger?" Rummaging for the carrier bag he had dropped by the side of the chair, Bodie tossed the present over with scant regard for the possible fragility of its contents. Catching the bag in a reflex, one-handed action, Doyle peered cautiously inside. He pulled out a well-wrapped parcel and stared at it with distrust. "All right, what is it this time?"

"Open it and find out. Go on. It won't bite."

"Promise?"

"Ray, would I? "

"Don't waste your time batting those baby blues at me. You'd do it like a shot, if you thought you could get away with it unscathed. And you can stop looking so hurt," Doyle advised with would-be tartness, but his heart wasn't in it. Feeling mellow with love did that to a bloke. Something else to blame Bodie for, when he could summon up the energy. "Manipulative sod," he accused with a tiny smile.

Bodie thought about it.

"I prefer the word inventive myself," he decided.

Fighting a determined application of Sellotape Doyle was prepared for almost anything. Bodie, with a mind that moved on a plane far removed from mundane convention, had always ignored the usual festive occasions completely. This Christmas Doyle had found himself swamped with mysteriously wrapped packages that even experience had not warned him against opening. The influx stemmed from a day at the beginning of December when Bodie, battered and exhausted after twenty-nine continuous hours on duty, had slumped down on a chair in the rest room, talking to keep himself awake. His laconic recital of the trials and tribulations he and Doyle had faced had drawn only a limited audience; no one had had an easy week of it. Unfortunately, his final sleepy aside that it had been a funny looking heating wand that their lovable lady terrorist had kept by her bed had fallen into a pool of quiet, the room erupting upon appreciating the nature of his error.

Unable to overcome the baser side of his nature, Doyle had revived for long enough to make the most of his partner's untypical lapse into naivety.

Conceding that he couldn't take on the whole squad, Bodie had resolved to exact retribution from his incoherent other half. He had tired of Ray's references to innocents abroad within the hour.

So during a period when others were busy doing their Christmas shopping, Bodie had taken to scouring the sleazier sex-shops for something his worldly-wise, I've-seen-it-all-in-the-Met. partner would not he able to identify.

Inundated with sexual aides - and impediments - Doyle had rapidly run out of places to store them, nervous of losing the good opinion of the dustman if he took the simple option and just threw them away. Judging by the size of the parcel Bodie had just given him, this one was likely to add to his storage problems.

"Just open it up, you know you're dying to," a familiar voice advised him.

Fingers already busy with the third layer of brown paper, Doyle unravelled it to find himself holding an unmarked box. He shook it.

"No bells this time," he noted.

They exchanged reminiscent grins.

Time would never erase the memory of the first present from Amsterdam which Bodie had presented to his partner. Filled only with happy expectation, Doyle had opened it in the Squad Room on Christmas Eve. Bodie's hasty assurances afterwards that he would have stopped Doyle if someone had come in had done little to mollify Doyle.

Bodie's revenge had been sweet indeed, helped by the fact they had been called out four minutes after Doyle had unwrapped it. Doyle had been compelled to spend the day moving to the accompaniment of the tiny silver bells which adorned the improbably-sized cock ring he had been given. Having nowhere to dispose of it before Cowley appeared, Doyle had carried it in a zipped inner pocket, becoming more paranoid as the day progressed that it would somehow escape to land at the Home Secretary's feet.

By late evening, after a day spent prowling the corridors of power a-twitch with a mixture of sexual arousal and apprehension, Doyle had been looking distinctly harassed. Bodie had been far from the only person to comment on the seasonal syncopated rhythm that had announced his every movement. Christmas Day had found Doyle very penitent.

That might have been the end of Bodie's tour of sleeze had it not been for the fact that Doyle had recovered by Boxing Day.

Bodie had driven the car two hundred yards down the road before he noticed what was swinging gently in the centre of the windscreen. His emergency stop had left enough rubber smeared across the tarmac to replenish a small plantation. Ignoring serene offers to buy him a budgie to go with the belled cock ring , Bodie had disposed of the ring with a heightened colour and furtive haste down the nearest drain.

"It's a shame you were too chicken to test that cock ring. I haven't seen one like it since," Bodie mourned, not disposed to admit that he thought he had exhausted the possibilities of Soho.

"I'm not surprised," replied Doyle absently. He peeled away the last remnant of Sellotape to remove the lid of the box. His mind wholly engaged on matters sexual, he was busy speculating on the shape buried in a mass of tissue paper. It felt distinctly unorthodox.

"What the hell have you found now? Oh."

Openly laughing, Bodie was willing to swear Doyle was disappointed.

"What did you think it would be?" he demanded finally.

"I was beginning to worry," replied Doyle mendaciously, his mind still on matters sexual.

All bright-eyed anticipation, his gaze lingered on Bodie's face, the plane of cheek and curve of mouth, travelling slowly down the sprawled body. As usual, the shirt was stubbornly buttoned almost to the throat but the sleeves were rolled back and a rarely worn tie was at half mast. Bodie paid for decent dressing. Put him in a tux and Doyle spent the evening in an agony of sexual expectancy. Doyle's eyes began to glaze over when they settled on the benign swelling at the groin. Those casually parted thighs were an invitation to experience their leashed power.

The headphones sliding out of his grasp he padded over to his lover.

"Sure they're big enough?" Doyle gestured vaguely back in the direction of the abandoned headphones with their huge padded earpieces.

"Who knows, bearing in mind the size of the lugholes they've got to cover," Bodie murmured. Brushing hair back, his fingers tugged gently at an ear lobe. "Aren't you going to try them out then?" he added, valiantly trying to ignore the deft fingers busy loosening his tie and easing open shirt buttons.

"Not just now," Doyle told him, rising to settle himself astride co-operatively closing legs and bouncing gently. "I'd rather practice my new hobby."

"What's that then?" enquired Bodie absently, his attention side-tracked by the drift of hands over him, never quite sure where they would alight next.

"Sodomy," said Doyle with succinct relish, settling himself firmly on Bodie. "Or bugg - "

"I get the drift. Stop fidgeting, my legs are going numb." Bodie successfully restrained Doyle, his thumbs snug in soft warmth, gently stroking. Ridiculous, he thought, that anything so wiry and argumentative could be such a turn on.

"Too much for you, am I?" Despite his derisive tone Doyle stopped bouncing, his knuckles brushing Bodie's cheekbones in a fleeting caress. He watched the deep blue eyes gain luminosity, the velvety pupils expanding. "You must he getting old. I know I am. I mean, the chair arm's all right in time of desperation but it's more fun with a few creature comforts. The bed's in the other room. You coming?"

"Quicker than you think if you carry on trying that." Bodie retorted, offering an admonishing frown to the hand trying to burrow its way under the still fastened waistband of his trousers.

"Well undo 'em."

"In a minute."

His fingers tweaking an abundance of hair, they slid to cup a stubble-roughened cheek as he drew Doyle even closer. They began to exchange languid, lazy kisses, sharing familiar taste and texture and sensation. Doyle's inarticulate murmurs of appreciation mingled with Bodie's.

"It's a bit early for bed, isn't it?" murmured Bodie. "Are you sure you wouldn't prefer the chair arm?" Having had the forethought to unfasten the trousers to Doyle's only suit, his hands eased down to massage the sharp press of the tail bone as Doyle tilted co-operatively forward.

More than half naked and wholly draped over his mate, Doyle offered warm-mouthed nuzzlings to any and every exposed portion of skin, nipping gently on occasion, his tongue tip tracing a vein or plane of muscle.

"I'm positive. Ah, not there, mate, or I'm gonna come in your lap. Slow and sweet, eh? There's no rush."

The finger stilled obediently before sliding away, so that when Doyle slowly straightened, his weight was taken by the hands cupping him.

"I'm too heavy for you."

"Yeah, but don't move." Bodie gave a contented sigh as he celebrated the simple pleasures of life - Ray Doyle, rumpled and loving and warm in his hands, giving him that deceptively sleepy smile.

Rosy with sexual heat Doyle's smile broadened as he peered down at himself. "It's a bit late to worry now, but at least I've got room for expansion. Unless you unfasten something you'll cut off the circulation."

He rapidly discovered his inability to do much to relieve Bodie's problem, finding himself in grave danger of over-balancing onto the floor. As he stood up, his legs unsteady, his shirt tails and trousers both slid floor wards. He made a grab for the latter. "Come to bed, Bodie."

"I dunno when everything changed," grumbled Bodie. "I can remember the days when you were grateful for just a bit of carpet under you." But rising to his feet he was following a familiar lure, flicking off the living room light in passing.

"Ah, but I'm getting old and jaded now, I expect the novelty's worn off," Doyle explained, turning in the circle of Bodie's arm, all grave solemnity.

"Thinking of trading me in, are you?"

A bare size nine foot settled firmly over a neatly shod size eight before Doyle slid his thumb nail down the beautifully defined cleft of Bodie's buttocks, watching his involuntary tiny thrust forwards with undisguised interest.

"I wonder what will happen if I - ?"

"Bed," Bodie prompted, unfastening his zip.

"I knew you'd come round to my way of thinking." Peeling off the trousers already drooping at mid-thigh, Doyle shrugged out of his now creased shirt and gave the bed a fond pat. "It's seen some happy times this has." His briefs, an attenuated flash of crimson, joined the rest of his clothes which were scattered across the floor around the bed.

Discovering that Bodie had been too intent on watching him to achieve the same state of grace, Doyle reached out a hopeful hand. "Want any help?"

"No, thank you, I prefer to take everything off," said Bodie, never having been allowed to forget the occasion when he had fallen asleep wearing one sock. Accustomed, if not resigned, to his mate's untidy habits, tonight he abandoned his longstanding attempt at reform, his own clothes mingling with Doyle's. Stepping through the assortment, his toes landed on a Doyle-warm scrap of crimson.

"My knickers turn you on, do they?" enquired Doyle, watching him with interest.

"Everything about you turns me on," Bodie told him sentimentally, his gaze pinned on the sweetly presented buttocks as Doyle rolled over, stretching to reach inside the bedside cabinet, his head over the edge of the bed.

Having succeeded in depositing virtually all the contents of the cabinet over the floor in an impressive cascade of sexual impedimenta, Doyle finally located the battered tube of lubricant he was searching for. Ignoring the fruits of Bodie's shopping forays, he righted himself, settling cross-legged in the centre of the bed, concentrating on emptying the depleted tube into the palm cupped to receive the gel.

"Even my socks?" he checked, cocking his head.

"What about them?" asked Bodie, having lost the conversational thread.

"You said you loved everything about me. Does that include my socks?"

"I've washed them out for you, haven't I?" retorted Bodie, his righteous tone at variance with his expectant heavy-lidded appraisal of Doyle's activities

"Only because you thought they were yours and neither of us had any clean ones."

"Well, if you want to quibble." Sitting opposite him in the centre of the bed, he peered at Doyle's heaped palm. "Got housewives hands, have you?" he asked solicitously, dabbing his index finger first in the gel, then onto Doyle's nose.

Trying to watch him and scowl at the same time Doyle went cross-eyed. "I'm warming it for you," he explained with unusual patience. "Or me,” he added, after a moment's reflection.

Bodie was noticeably unmoved by this thoughtfulness. "This going to be a solo night then?

"Don't waste it," he yelled, just in time. "That's all we've got."

"We could improvise." But Doyle abandoned his threatening stance, one leg crooked companionably over Bodie's, the fingers of his free hand caressing a dark-downed thigh.

"Not with butter we couldn't," Bodie told him, in a reminiscent mood.

Doyle kissed him. "The things you do for me. It's lucky it was salt free."

Bodie winced. Caught in by the expression in his lover's eyes, he slid his arms over Doyle's shoulders. Leaning forward, he set about relearning the sensation of soft upper lip, the glide of enamel and velvety tongue tip. Easing Doyle down, his mouth moved with lazy familiarity over long-loved pleasure spots, lingering here and there before his tongue tip delved into the tiny budded navel.

Doyle whimpered, his belly muscles twitching, eyes falling shut. Bodie's hand brushed the velvety heat-hardness, his breath warm, damp and tantalisingly close.

With a sigh, Bodie sat back, shaking his head.

"No, it wouldn't be right," he announced.

Scrunched eyes opened, the glare in them promising bodily harm as Doyle recognised that tone of spurious self-denial.

"What wouldn't?" he demanded, leaning up on his elbows the better to direct his glare.

"Taking advantage of an old man. Did you know," Bodie continued, warming to his theme, "that a bloke's in his prime between the ages of seventeen and twenty four? It's downhill all the way after that. You're thirty five," he added, offering a sympathetic caress.

"Why you rotten - " Surging upwards, it took Doyle scant seconds to straddle a happily supine Bodie. "Downhill, eh?" He bounced solidly.

Braced for a weight that was taken by Doyle's knees on the mattress, Bodie nodded.

"That's what the article said," he replied meekly, his hands skimming down the smooth flanks and up again. "Going to have your wicked way with me to prove otherwise, are you?"

Doyle considered the proposition for approximately one second. "I could do, I suppose," he conceded.

Leaning fully over Bodie, his elbows digging into the mattress on either side of the dark head, he found Bodie's mouth again. But despite the sweet friction of their close-pressed bodies he became aware that he didn't have his partner's complete attention.

"Bodie?"

"Mmm. This is nice. But why have you got that fist waving round my ear?"

"What? Oh, bugger." Doyle uncurled his fingers, the gel oozing between them hot rather than merely warm. "Right, spread 'em, sunshine. There's no time to waste," he said briskly.

"Has anyone ever told you that you've got a real way with words," said Bodie admiringly, but he was already turning. "I suppose you'd have to hurry though. I mean, time's passing and you're getting older by the minute."

"You always have liked to live dangerously," murmured Doyle. His mouth settled over Bodie's left buttock, licking him before he began to nuzzle all the tender places of his lover's body. Bodie accepted it all, ravished by the delving tongue tip and drifting fingers, almost purring with the pleasure of allowing Doyle to do what he would with him. But he gave a soft, choked cry when slick fingers rubbed lushly against relaxing muscle, sinking inwards, making small encouraging noises, unable to remain still then.

Their loving was a languid, leisurely affair, with no fireworks, just a slow, slow climb to pleasure, their voices mingling; an in caught breath, a soft sigh. Leisurely until Bodie's control broke, passivity gone as he surged up and back, rocketing Doyle to climax, his own release spilling over the hand cradling him against his own flesh.

"It's lucky I'm fit," Doyle mumbled eventually, his breath stirring the beginning-to-curl hair at the nape of Bodie's neck. "Enough to give anyone heart attack hump, you are."

Bodie's hand rose in lethargic acknowledgement, landing limply on the first available portion of Doyle it could find.

"Just one thing wrong," continued Doyle, wriggling until he could reach Bodie's ear, wanting to check he hadn't died.

"You telling me I'm not perfect?" asked Bodie without anxiety.

"No, complaining because I couldn't see your face."

"I do have that effect on people," Bodie conceded modestly, before he groaned. "Pack it in, will you. I'm damp enough already. It's a mucky business this."

"Somewhat," agreed Doyle gravely.

Slick, sated, and finally released, Bodie flopped over onto his back, unwittingly offering a new target. He bore Doyle's continuing ministrations with resigned fortitude for as long as he could.

"All right, all right, we'll buy a mirror," he conceded, goose bumps shivering down him.

All enthusiasm, Doyle sat up before his expression changed to one of intense gloom. "We can't. This is a CI5 flat," he reminded Bodie.

"We can put it down to home improvements. Why stop at one? I don't want you spending valuable time deciding which is your best side - I already know what that is." Bodie traced the hard rise of a small buttock, cupping it with familiar pleasure before he gave it an absent squeeze.

Doyle wriggled back into his lover's touch. "There are times when I think you only love me for my arse," he remarked drowsily. While he was ready for sleep he was reluctant to lose any of what had been a gloriously lazy day's leave. Not that they had done anything special by most peoples' definition of the word: a game of squash and a pub lunch, followed by an afternoon spent working on the bike. Unwinding, they had talked of everything and nothing before they had cleaned up and put on their suits to drop in on Ruth's engagement bash. Then home again.

All with Bodie.

"I sometimes think you're right," Bodie agreed. He found himself on the receiving end of a fierce bear hug.

"What was that for?" he asked, hugging Doyle back.

"You being you."

Unimpressed, a sleepy blue eye opened. "I'd look bloody silly as anyone else."

"I've got news for you," said Doyle, just before he was ambushed by a massive yawn.

"Yeah, yeah." Bodie gave the head tucked under his chin an indulgent grin, wriggled and grimaced. "This bed's a mess. I'm lying on a sticky bit."

His head tilting upwards, Doyle looked suitably modest, only to be shot down when Bodie, after investigating underneath himself produced the squashed remnants of a seeping tube.

"For a nasty moment I thought something important might have fallen off." He cleaned his hand by the simple expedient of wiping it on Doyle, who restricted himself to a displeased glare before drying himself with a portion of the sheet.

"I sometimes wonder if you ever grew up - and no, I don't want you to prove it now," he added hastily. "One thing, you won't be so perky tomorrow morning; it's your turn to cook breakfast."

"How come?"

"I'm an old man, remember? Anyway, who cooked dinner?"

"We went out."

"Yesterday."

"Me," said Bodie with truth. He grinned at the mumbled obscenity that elicited. Both he and the bed seemed to be drying out nicely. Probably Ray's heat, he mused. In a talkative mood, his arms tightened around Doyle's ribs. "You going to sleep?"

"With or without you," Doyle agreed, not opening his eyes.

"We should have a shower."

"What's the point, unless you want to remake the bed. You wanna remake the bed?"

"In your dreams."

"That's what I thought. Go to sleep."

Bodie allowed a small silence to develop. "I need to take a leak."

An aggrieved face glared blearily at him before Doyle rolled away onto his side of the bed.

Surrendering, Bodie held up his hand. "All right, I'll be quick, and quiet. No hogging all the dry bits while I'm gone."

True to his word Bodie stopped singing the moment he re-entered the bedroom, but was unable to resist nuzzling the nape of Doyle's neck, sneezing as soft curls brushed his nose. Doyle gave an unenthusiastic grunt, but when the light finally clicked off, reached out to draw Bodie close.

"Worn you out, have I?" Bodie whispered into the ear nearest to him, tracing the silvered sideburns. Doyle, sunny-tempered and sleepy was hard to resist; he had no intention of trying.

A pained sigh gusted past him.

"Not quite. But in case you'd forgotten, we're due in at 5.30 tomorrow morning."

There was a stunned silence.

"5.30?" repeated Bodie, aghast

"Your voice just went up a good half-octave then."

"What cretin volunteered us for that shift?" demanded an indignant voice in something approaching its usual pitch.

"Cowley."

"Oh." Accepting there was no point in kicking against that particular prick, Bodie snuggled down.

"That's all you've got to say?" Doyle's hand drifted up a dark-downed thigh.

"Not at all. Good night."

Thrusting temptation aside, on the ground it would be asleep next to him in the morning, Bodie shut his eyes and under Doyle's incredulous gaze promptly fell asleep. It was a facility Doyle still couldn't believe, despite having lived with it for seventeen months.

"He can't have," he breathed, indignant and more wakeful by the second.

Leaning up fractionally he peered down; Bodie was asleep all right, the selfish git. After a short internal debate he resisted the impulse to poke Bodie awake, content for a while to listen to the soft breathing of his sleeping partner.

The familiar novelty wore off when he discovered his inability to do the same. After fifty minutes of fidgeting next to a blissfully sleeping Bodie he gave up and stalked off to the bathroom. On his return, his eyes still recovering from the shock of the bathroom light, his dignified crossing of the room was impaired when he trod on assorted sexual aides and measured his length, his yell of surprise successfully waking the sleeper.

"Stop moaning. It's your fault for buying them in the first place," Doyle repeated severely. He limped over to clamber back into bed, seeking out Bodie's sleep-warmed flesh with a shiver.

"That's no excuse you go leaving them littered across the floor," replied Bodie with a jaundiced look downwards.

"Here's me crippled for life, and that's all you can worry about," moaned Doyle, bent double as he nursed his bruised instep. "God only knows what I trod on." He peered over the edge of the bed, trying to identify the culprit in the half-light and saw a mixture of plastic, rubber and feathers before a glint of metal caught his eye.

"Aha!" He scooped up a heavily studded object made of black leather, its straps dangling. "Look at it, is it any wonder I'm in agony," he said bitterly.

"It's twenty past two in the morning. Go to sleep."

"Yeah, in a minute," said Doyle absently as he examined the object he was holding in some detail. He nudged Bodie in the ribs with a bony elbow. "You reckon after all these months of unwedded bliss it's time for perfect honesty between us?"

His hair sticking up in rebellious tufts, blinking owlishly under the combined assault of the light and Doyle's gaze, Bodie eyed the studded leather swinging from slender fingers with distinct mistrust.

"Maybe."

Draping two straps over Bodie's throat, Doyle leant up on one elbow to admire the effect.

"Good. Then what the hell is this for?"

"Do you mean to tell me you don't know?'

"Your voice has gone all squeaky again," noted Doyle, amused. "It's that bad, huh?" He draped a third strap down Bodie's chest, and offered a wolfish grin. "I kept telling you I wasn't in the Vice Squad but would you listen? All right, so what's it for then?"

"You're not thinking of using it?"

"I dunno until you tell me where it goes, do I?" replied Doyle reasonably, finding himself with three more straps and nowhere to drape them.

"I wouldn't even if I could," admitted Bodie, forced to concede defeat. He flicked the leather disdainfully away, found it too heavy and dropped it on the floor.

"D'you reckon it's some kind of a truss?"

"How the hell would I know? We could hang onto it for a few years, you're bound to be needing one before me. That hurt," Bodie added with dignity.

"It was meant to. You must have _some_ idea what it's for."

"S 'n' M?" hazarded Bodie.

"No, thanks. I tell you what, find out where it goes and the rest will be obvious."

"You reckon? The bloke in the shop where I bought it didn't know either. Business was slack that day so he and I spent twenty minutes trying to work it out. On reflection, it's lucky no one came in," Bodie mused, his mouth quirking at the memory.

"Bet you made the bloke's day," said Doyle affectionately. Sometimes Bodie could be so gormless; it was quite endearing really. When it wasn't driving you crazy, of course. "Twenty minutes?" he added.

"That's right. And we still couldn't find a use for all the straps."

Surging over him, Doyle retrieved the object from the floor. "Give it here. There's only so many places it _can_ fit."

Ten minutes later, having tested all of them out on a reluctant model, Doyle conceded defeat while insisting there was no point in repeating the exercise on him.

Bodie rose up over him, blocking out the light. "Shut up, Ray," he said mildly.

Surrendering to the inevitable, Doyle cupped his partner's buttocks. Several minutes later the studded leather slid, unnoticed, to the floor.

oOo

The following morning two taciturn figures crawled into work, bestubbled and red-eyed from lack of sleep. They awoke with gratifying rapidity at 8.30 when Phillips informed them that a new security system was due to be installed in selected flats, that they were among the lucky few and would they please hand over their keys.

Recalling only too vividly the state of the bedroom as they had left it, Bodie felt his life flash before his eyes, Cowley entering the room while he was mid-refusal. Then, noticing Doyle's hand which was frozen in his jacket pocket give a sudden twitch, he brightened: Ray would think of something.

Doyle did, virtuously handing over his key with a cherubic innocence, impervious to Bodie's look of anguish.

Only when he had handed over his own key did the full horror dawn on Bodie. It was _his_ bedroom floor, his flat they had been living in, his bedside cabinet in which Ray had hidden everything.

He avoided uttering any senseless recriminations, partly because he could see Doyle had all his arguments marshalled but mainly because they were to spend the rest of the day nurse-maiding two of the newest recruits.

Bodie grew increasingly abstracted throughout a day not enlivened by the fact it was spent in making a security assessment of a chemical plant outside Coventry.

"You're looking bit harassed," said Doyle placidly when the car was within a few hundred yards of Bodie's flat and they were alone at last.

Slumped in the passenger seat, lost to fatalistic gloom, Bodie gave him a look of disbelief.

"And you can't think why?" he growled. Of course they should have told Cowley when they first became lovers rather than waiting for a suitable moment to present itself. A reasonably optimistic soul, even Bodie could not delude himself that public discovery of his flat littered with studded leather and plastic dildos, not to mention most of Doyle's belongings, could constitute a suitable moment.

"Nah." Drawing into the kerb and switching off the ignition, Doyle gave him a serene smile.

I can't afford to murder the remaining breadwinner of the team, Bodie reminded himself as he mentally catalogued what careers might be left open to him once word got around. It was the injustice of it that hurt most. If Ray wasn't such a slob everything would have been neatly hidden away.

Oh god. The bed. Even Ray couldn't have forgotten the state of the bed.

"You mind telling me why you're so calm about all this?" he asked politely, leaving the car to stand on the curb, his shoulders hunched.

Doyle offered a beatific smile across the car roof. "The key you gave Philips was to my flat. So was the one I gave him. I've got both of yours here." He produced them with a flourish. "He won't have been able to get in."

He found his palm denuded and himself addressing thin air, Bodie already halfway up the stairs, him mind fixed on salvation.

 

It wasn't until they had returned from their trip to the local rubbish dump and he was on his third restorative brandy that Bodie thought to ask an unnaturally quiet Doyle when he had realised they were saved.

Doyle took a leisurely sip of brandy. "When I found three keys in my jacket pocket," he said with sunny good-humour, but by then he was laughing too much to make good his escape from the bed.

 

Does this," said Doyle plaintively, some time later, "mean I won't be getting any Christmas presents next year?"

Licking up the last trace of brandy caught in Doyle's navel, Bodie paused, then looked up, a small joyous smile appearing. He knew just the place to get it too.

"When's your birthday again?" he asked vaguely.

There was a horrified silence.

"Bodie, you wouldn't? Promise me? Bodie - "

 

THE END

**Author's Note:**

> Published in the letterzine _The Hatstand Express_
> 
> Republished in _HG Collected 2_


End file.
